Rock art in Western Australia is at risk of being damaged or destroyed by the booming mining and energy industries. In the 1960s, there were nearly one million panels of etchings on the Burrup Peninsula, and while the rock art was put on the National Heritage List last year, there are still no protective measures in place. “We put the biggest industrial development in the country at the same site as the biggest cultural heritage site in the country. It’s incredible,” said Robert Bednarik, who is credited with discovering the images.

Proposed changes to Environmental Protection Agency regulations would allow power plants in the U.S. to build near national parks, including the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings in Colorado. College sophomore Danielle Gonzales explains how such changes would damage the country’s parks and monuments.  

U.S. News and World Report sums up recent DNA research and its impact on theories of human migration to the New World. “Archaeologists are used to stone tools and bones. So for us to be presented with this kind of evidence is pretty intriguing,” said Ted Goebel of Texas A&M University, who is described as “a longtime Clovis supporter.”  

A new phase of restoration at the Parthenon will begin next year, covering its western façade with scaffolding for three years. The western side has been damaged by bullets, earthquakes, and humidity.  

In Utah’s Skull Valley, there was a short-lived town where Polynesian converts to Mormonism lived between 1889 and 1917, when most of them returned to Oahu. Benjamin Pykles, of the State University of New York at Potsdam, is conducting the first archaeological survey of the site. “This was supposed to be a permanent settlement. Its size and the amount of money they put into it points to that conclusion,” he said.   Learn more about the artifacts recovered at the Polynesian town of Iosepa in this second article.  

Here’s some more information on the hippodrome at Olympia, from National Geographic News.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Friday, July 25, 2008. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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